Tanaka's Pitching Trendlines, II
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Pitching Trendlines 101
When a guy's numbers are off the chart, then a little bit of bouncing up-and-down is not a factor.
Payton Manning's offense doesn't even PLOT on the team visualizations -- it's quite literally off the graph. Supposing it moves a skosh toward being visible on the graph, but still isn't on there?
No trend.
Masuhiro Tanaka's CTL (strikeout-to-walk) ratio this year was "down" to 5.7. This while he went unbeaten.
No trend.
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Pitching Trendlines 102
Now, all that said ... K/BB ratios are only one piece of information. Here you've got a super-analyst, living in Japan, who worries whether Tanaka is sliding downhill a bit. So that's another issue.
Dr. D hasn't been watching Tanaka, but ... IN A VACUUM here are the typical syndromes that cause a pitcher to LOOK like he's losing a bit of his edge.
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Mileage on the arm. If Tanaka's arm is suffering some wear and tear, it wouldn't necessarily have to show up in lost velocity (and it hasn't).
Very often it shows up in loss of command. Maybe a few more mistakes here and there. With Jamie Moyer or Hisashi Iwakuma, all it takes is a few "mistakes," out and over the plate, and a start can be ruined.
Dr. D compares it to shooting a 3-pointer in the fourth quarter, when you're tired. You just don't feather the ball as well. This happens to old pitchers. Their muscles don't have the oomph, and you see it in loss of precision.
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For those who missed the memo, Tanaka was a kaibutsu, a high school "monster" who threw 700-800 pitches in a 9-day stretch. That is the equivalent of:
- 250 pitches per start
- 3 starts in a row
- On short rest
Fill in your own punch line. But the Japanese simply do not accept our pitch-count paradigm. Neither did Nolan Ryan, or any MLB pitcher before 1980.
A baseball scout's reaction to this will be simple: how did he look in the Japan series? At the end of the season, Tanaka threw two games in the postseason:
Box score #1 - Rakuten 2, Lotte 0
Box score #2 - Rakuten 2, Yomiuri 1
Tanaka's K/BB ratio in these games was 21:4 in 18 innings, and his ERA 0.50. I guess that you could say that his K/BB continued its trend down, from 8.0 to 5.5 to 5.2 ...
We're kiddin' around. ... once Tanaka decided to stop pacing himself, his K-per-game went right back to 10.5 per nine.
You can buy in or not; those two games will mean a whale of a lot to pro ML scouts who are making their recommendations on a contract. That, to them, is the answer to the question "is the mileage adding up"?
Of course, we might have used the same logic to justify a Daisuke Matsuzaka contract; no doubt he threw some great games just before he came over, and hit the wall a year or two in to his MLB career. (Matsuzaka was also a high school kaibutsu.)
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Adjustments. A very common trend, especially outside America, is that an elite pitcher will --- > blow the league to smithereeens, and then --- > the hitters will go defensive in the batter's box.
Obviously a hitter can prevent a strikeout, if he's willing to pepper-swing the bat without using his legs.
Considering that Tanaka's K's went down from 9+ to 7+, but that his ERA wound up at 1.27 and he went undefeated, I'm guessing that people weren't swinging with a lot of gusto on him.
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Pacing yourself. Before 1980, it was very common for major league hitters to "save their best stuff" for the big moments, with runners on base.
A pitcher like Tanaka hits super-elite status, he can sort of "sit on the lineup," cruising along, throwing fastballs at the knees, and ... dial it up at moments of his choosing.
You have seen a pitcher do this. His name is Felix Hernandez.
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Aches and Pains. Almost every pitcher is throwing in pain. One thing that would make you feel better about Tanaka ... not that he will be a Mariner, LOL ... how about Hisashi Iwakuma?
Iwakuma had serious issues with his shoulder. But his balance, his movement, the way he engages his body, his intelligence ... he bounced back very strongly.
Matsuzaka was never a Greg Maddux type. He was always a little wild in the zone, and when he lost command from there (due to injury), well...
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On the issue of body type. ... well... let's split that out. Along with the R/X shtick :- )
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